League would improve drastically if...

People just played champions based primarily upon how much they like them and how good **they **are with them. If this community could somehow manage that, I honestly think it would improve tenfold. We'd see a greater diversity of champions, showing people that every champion can perform well in the right hands and the right situation. Even the worst champions can make themselves somewhat useful if you know them well enough and are good enough with them. We'd also see people start to realize, at least in lower ELOs, that it's less about "counters" and what's OP/UP and more about actual counter_play_. For example, I'd likely have fewer people questioning me for picking into because this shift would cause those sorts of matchups to happen more frequently, and thus people would have more chances to witness how important experience and respective skill level is in deciding them. Moreover, the ones foolish enough to still pick what's "OP"/a "counter" without taking into account whether that champion actually is "OP" or a "counter" in their hands would see how foolish it is to base their decisions on such things.

How could such a climate be brought about, though? One idea that I've seen floated around, that I cosign, is disallowing players to use champions in ranked that they lack in-game experience with by tying things to the mastery system, requiring at minimum a level 2 mastery to take a champion to ranked. Complaints lodged against this idea include that it would turn off newer players as it further delays their entry into ranked. To that, I say two things. One, while that is true, it would also decrease the likelihood of fools (such as myself) entering ranked woefully unprepared, knowing only one champion/role and not having adequate runes, since they'd have more time to learn as well as earn IP for runes (or more champions). Two, League has the largest community of any online game and so expanding its userbase isn't exactly #1 on the priority list. Also, the new player experience is known for being bad, and I actually think this would help the players it doesn't dissuade, as it would make the "new to ranked" player experience less rough thanks to the bar they have to clear for entry being higher.

Another idea, which is in the works, and could be used in tandem with the above idea, is ranked team builder. What we've been told to expect somewhere down the line is a new version of team builder that allows you to choose your role but not your champion, with the champion select phase remaining similar to how it currently is. Were this to finally become a reality, and be combined with that first idea I mentioned, there would be almost no squabbling/confusion over who gets what role and it would be guaranteed that they have some experience with whichever champion they choose to fill that role, making it so fewer people would accuse you of being a troll if you picked, say, an unconventional support. If Riot could somehow work together with these guys (http://lol.arenaonline.com/), they could even go one step further and prevent you from choosing a champion you don't have experience with in the role you chose, as that site is surprisingly accurate when it comes to figuring out which role you performed in a given match. The only oddity I've seen is it listing my friend as having an Akali "support" match, when in reality he'd never do such a thing (not in ranked) and probably just ganked bot so much the site mistook him for a support. This would help prevent people from queuing up as a support just to find a group faster, only to go somewhere else once it comes time to pick champions.

One more idea that I think would help is if Riot could at least make our average grades with champions visible to both us and our opponents, possibly showing up alongside our choice in champion select (along with the number of matches, since the fewer you have, the more likely a couple bad matches are to skew the results). On top of this, they could expand upon the mastery system, also potentially with the help of the people who run that site I mentioned, and have it so you're able to get multiple separate masteries for a given champion. Rather than getting a title (that you never see) based upon the champion's main role, there could be titles for each of the 5 roles. So you might be a Level 5 top, but only a Level 3 mid. And, if they wanted to, they could combine all these separate masteries under one header for each champion, showing people your overall mastery with them as well. This would further prevent people doubting your abilities with a given champion. Riot seems wary of showing your grades to others, as they said they would only add the grades in match history for your eyes only, but I think it can be agreed that implementing the grades in this fashion would do more good than harm.

In short, there are steps Riot can take to increase diversity, and I think those steps would decrease toxicity at the same time. It wouldn't be an overnight thing, no matter how they chose to accomplish it, but I still think it can be done and that it's worth trying. The ideas I've presented are just the ones that come to mind for me. I'd love to hear more suggestions along these lines from others, as well as general feedback.